Buttoned Up: Clothing, Conformity, and White-Collar Masculinity

Author:   Erynn Masi de Casanova
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
ISBN:  

9781501700491


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   18 December 2015
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
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Buttoned Up: Clothing, Conformity, and White-Collar Masculinity


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Overview

Who is today's white-collar man? The world of work has changed radically since The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and other mid-twentieth-century investigations of corporate life and identity. Contemporary jobs are more precarious, casual Friday has become an institution, and telecommuting blurs the divide between workplace and home. Gender expectations have changed, too, with men's bodies increasingly exposed in the media and scrutinized in everyday interactions. In Buttoned Up, based on interviews with dozens of men in three U.S. cities with distinct local dress cultures-New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati-Erynn Masi de Casanova asks what it means to wear the white collar now. Despite the expansion of men's fashion and grooming practices, the decrease in formal dress codes, and the relaxing of traditional ideas about masculinity, white-collar men feel constrained in their choices about how to embody professionalism. They strategically embrace conformity in clothing as a way of maintaining their gender and class privilege. Across categories of race, sexual orientation and occupation, men talk about ""blending in"" and ""looking the part"" as they aim to keep their jobs or pursue better ones. These white-collar workers' accounts show that greater freedom in work dress codes can, ironically, increase men's anxiety about getting it wrong and discourage them from experimenting with their dress and appearance.

Full Product Details

Author:   Erynn Masi de Casanova
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Imprint:   Cornell University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781501700491


ISBN 10:   1501700499
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   18 December 2015
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Reviews

"""Office culture is full of passive aggressions and radical uncertainties. Buttoned Up is a delightfully firm hook on which to hang your hat, if hats are your thing. The author has a fun, personable tone. She's not heavy on numbers or footnotes or jargon. The language is not dry or overly academic, though academics are the obvious target audience. I hope Buttoned Up is read by a lot of regular people, because it's about regular people and more regular people could use some reassurance that they've been reading their work situations correctly.""-Megan Volpert, PopMatters (January 6, 2016) ""Buttoned Up evokes sociological thought through considerations of the embodiment of gender, social constructions of dress style, and differences across age, region, or workplace. The book reads like a well-rounded documentary on white-collar dress: delving into histories, uncovering biographies, exploring workplace habitats, pondering symbolic meanings, and comparing geographies... Scholars can make use of this book in a myriad of interdisciplinary courses on fashion and identity formation, the body, gender, and masculinities."" -- Trenton M. Haltom,Culture, Society, and Masculinites(August 2016) ""Buttoned Up is a compelling and engaging analysis of the ways that men in white-collar professions understand the significance of clothes.""-Adia Harvey Wingfield, Washington University in St. Louis, author of No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work ""While we may think of white-collar masculinity as the timid commuter in the gray flannel suit, Erynn Masi de Casanova's erudite book demonstrates that middle-class men understood that such complacent conformity was the price tag for class, race, and gender dominance. Being buttoned-down meant having privilege neatly sewn up.""-Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies and Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, Stony Brook University, author of Manhood in America ""I love this thought-provoking book; it is a pleasure to read. Erynn Masi de Casanova offers a nuanced and detailed exploration of a taken-for-granted and understudied topic: white-collar men's bodies. Buttoned Up attends to issues of ethnicity, sexuality, age, place, and company culture as they intersect in complex ways with masculinity and bourgeois class. It is a terrific example of qualitative social science research; Casanova's in-depth interviews support her theoretical insights.""-Susan B. Kaiser, University of California, Davis, author of The Social Psychology of Clothing and Fashion and Cultural Studies"


Buttoned Up is a compelling and engaging analysis of the ways that men in white-collar professions understand the significance of clothes. -Adia Harvey Wingfield, Washington University in St. Louis, author of No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work While we may think of white-collar masculinity as the timid commuter in the gray flannel suit, Erynn Masi de Casanova's erudite book demonstrates that middle-class men understood that such complacent conformity was the price tag for class, race, and gender dominance. Being buttoned-down meant having privilege neatly sewn up. -Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies and Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, Stony Brook University, author of Manhood in America I love this thought-provoking book; it is a pleasure to read. Erynn Masi de Casanova offers a nuanced and detailed exploration of a taken-for-granted and understudied topic: white-collar men's bodies. Buttoned Up attends to issues of ethnicity, sexuality, age, place, and company culture as they intersect in complex ways with masculinity and bourgeois class. It is a terrific example of qualitative social science research; Casanova's in-depth interviews support her theoretical insights. -Susan B. Kaiser, University of California, Davis, author of The Social Psychology of Clothing and Fashion and Cultural Studies


Buttoned Up is a compelling and engaging analysis of the ways that men in white-collar professions understand the significance of clothes. -Adia Harvey Wingfield, Washington University in St. Louis, author of No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work


Author Information

Erynn Masi de Casanova is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Making Up the Difference: Women, Beauty, and Direct Selling in Ecuador, winner of the National Women's Studies Association's Sara A. Whaley Book Prize.

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